Johnny Marr: the interview

Johnny Marr is exhausted, which is great news for me. 'I tend to start rambling,' he apologises immediately, 'especially when I'm tired.' At 6.30 in the evening, after a full day of press interviews, he proves as good as his word: the ideal interviewee, waffling on for twice the allotted time on any subject I care to bring up.

He's remarkably good natured, too. Here to discuss The Messenger, his new album, he's nonetheless happy to rehash the inevitable: to go over his thoughts and feelings on that band. Ever since Marr left the Smiths in 1987 at the tender age of 23, there can't have been many bigmouthed interviewers who haven't tried to tempt him on the subject, and yet he takes it all with admirable good nature. It must be difficult for him. While he's obviously hugely proud of what the Smiths achieved, he appears to be a man who has always lived in the moment. When I ask him what sense of achievement he felt after recording the group's debut 1983 single, 'Hand in Glove', he scoffs at the notion that he might've created something of resounding significance. 'It was just my little band that I thought my mates would think were really cool,' he laughs. 'I just hoped I'd get a chance to make another record.'

With Marr fast approaching his 50th birthday, the chance to make another record has indeed fallen his way again, only this time it's an album of some landmark significance. After years as a celebrated session musician and guest band member, The Messenger is Johnny's debut solo album. While he has recorded under his own name before (as Johnny Marr & The Healers), his first solo collection is a much tighter affair – driven, focused and quite obviously written with live performance in mind. I put it to him that it's an album celebrating the guitar, arguably his first love, and he agrees enthusiastically. '[I wanted to] play on every song as naturally as I can, and in a way that I do when other people ask me to be me on their record.'

'[In making an album] there is the temptation to try and reinvent one's own wheel,' he explains, warming quickly to the subject, 'because you're just trying too hard to be clever. If I want to see Television, who I still really like, I don't want them to sound like the Arctic Monkeys. They don't need to be a great new band competing with bands half their age, they just need to be as great at being them as possible.' I wonder if he is content that the Johnny Marr of 2013 is the best Johnny Marr possible. The songs on the new album, he says somewhat bashfully, are tracks that 'I would probably like if I wasn't me. Which is a really sweet thing to think, I think.'

So far, the album has garnered generally positive reviews, and it's something of a relief to find that Marr the frontman is a strong and able presence. It must be hard to step right up to the microphone after so many years comfortably inhabiting stage-left, but again, it seems to be a subject that Johnny has been mulling over for years. 'As far as being a frontman and a lyricist, I had my criteria worked out by the time I was 17. I was always auditioning people, and you just knew when they didn't have it. As a singer, I've worked that criteria out by recording lots and lots of different singers, whether that's Beth Orton, Liam Gallagher, Ian McCulloch, Morrissey or Matt Johnson. I've sat behind the console with singers in every different scenario, so I just see myself as another one.'

I wonder whether his experience working with some of Britain's great lyricists – Morrissey and Billy Bragg in particular – has put him under any pressure to work on his lyrics. 'Not any harder than I'd expect anyone else I was in a band with, to be honest. Like all artistic endeavours, some things just come out of the blue, all formed, inspired, lucky and fabulous. Other things you have to craft, which I also find enjoyable.'

I prepared for this interview determined to be one of the few journos who managed to get through their allotted time without mentioning the 'S' word, but as a lifelong fan, I simply can't help myself. Determined to be clever with it, I decide to ask him about the band's constantly rumoured reformation indirectly (a day later, I read in another interview that most people try exactly the same approach with him – not so clever after all). With my closing question, I inquire how many times a week he gets asked about reforming the Smiths, and for the only time in our conversation, the weary Johnny sounds genuinely tired. 'You know,' he says with all the enthusiasm of a man forced to repeat the same line, 'you're the first person today. So, well done. You get the prize.'

Now I know how Joan of Arc felt.

Johnny Marr's debut solo album, The Messenger is out on February 26